Networking – Friends, Family and Colleagues, Have You Leveraged Yours?
Photo courtesy Photos8.com
“I get by with a little help from my friends.” Lennon and McCartney
Networking is not only about who you know (friends, family and colleagues), it’s also about who knows who you know (if that makes any sense). It sometimes comes down to “six degrees of separation” (aka “it’s a small world”) which means you need to leverage your network in a different way. In “the old days”, there was no easy way to tell who knew who, but today there are a number of websites that can tell you who is linked to who. Of course there is more to networking, and you should also take a quick look at some of my other networking posts:
I will, of course, discuss some of the usual suspects when it comes to social networks, but I will also try to cover some sources that are not as well known. Now on to some additional links and advice on leveraging your “small world” to real leads.
- Is “Six Degrees of Separation” the Key to the Hidden Job Market? – This article, from prlog.org, reviews the “hidden job market” and discusses “strategic social networking” as well as leveraging the well know social networks. The article also implies that today’s networks are larger than they were in the past as social networks allow easy expansion. The fact is, not as many people as you would think leverage the hidden job market (which, by most statistics I’ve seen published is north of 50%).
- UpMo.com – You probably already know that this site’s name is the short phrase for “upwardly mobile” (or maybe you don’t). Not specifically a social network, this site help become successful by shaping your career via their management tool. Using thousands of data points, it helps you come up with a recommendations on how to network. The site also helps you set career and educational and professional goals. Certainly worth a look
- LinkedIn – Can’t write about Social Networks (and networking in general) without mentioning LinkedIn. The “mother of all social business networks”, LinkedIn provides exactly the tools you need for leveraging your network. As you start to build your network, you can see how many “degrees of separation” there are between you and people you know (and people who know people you know). This helps you spot potential network leads that you can use when you have a specific company you would like to work for (or, for which you already have an interview setup). You can add your resume, recommendations from people you know, search for jobs, join groups and more. There is even a special section for Job Seekers that provdes a number of great tips on leveraging LinkedIn for your networking and job search.
- Ryze – This site is worth a look. It is free (of course) and can be used for job search, to help your career planning, join networks, view member pages and more. There are approximately 500,000 users so far (a far cry from the number of users that LinkedIn has). The site has classifieds, with a main section on job search.
- 20 Social Networking Sites for Business Professionals – Way too many to list in this post, this article was provided by Sitepoint.com and lists 20 Social Networks for business professionals (who knew there were so many). The article provides screen shots and links to each of the 20 (including two of the sites covered above).
Good luck in your search.
